Black Voters Could Sway an Alabama Senate Race Rocked by Scandal

SELMA, Ala. — The volatile Alabama Senate race has generated national headlines with the allegations of sexual misconduct by the Republican candidate Roy S. Moore — and the question of whether Mr. Moore’s white evangelical base will stick by him.

But the outcome could also hinge on another key voting bloc: African-Americans, whose participation in the Dec. 12 election will be crucial if the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, is to have a chance.

Democrats have not won a statewide race here since 2008, and some worry that black voters, who make up more than half of the Democratic electorate, are not sufficiently engaged two weeks before the election. Glen Browder, an emeritus professor of political science at Jacksonville State University who served as a Democratic congressman from Alabama from 1989 to 1996, said that Mr. Moore’s core supporters see the race in “moral and ideological” terms and would be highly motivated to go to the polls. But many black voters, he said, were not equally invested in the race. “I’d say it’s less likely that they will turn out,” he said.

Mr. Jones’s potential — and his potential problems — are evident in Selma, famous for its role in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, and set in the poor, agricultural, and heavily African-American swath of the state known as the Black Belt. The region is a prime target for Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.

Synethia Pettaway, the chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, said the allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Moore had heightened awareness of the race among her fellow black voters, particularly women.

“What I’m finding is that the women are not taking it lightly,” Ms. Pettaway said, “because I’m finding there are more women who have been sexually harassed or molested than people realize.”

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Roy Moore and his wife, Kayla, at a news conference with supporters and faith leaders in Birmingham this month.CreditDrew Angerer/Getty Images

But in interviews last Tuesday with 10 African-Americans at a strip mall near the Walmart, six of them said they were not aware that a Senate race was underway.

Those who had heard about the race said they were disposed to vote against Mr. Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Tabatha Jones, 39, a caregiver, said that she was mostly sick of the incessant turmoil Mr. Moore had stirred up over the years — not only over the recent allegations, which troubled her, but also the two times Mr. Moore was effectively removed from the state’s high court after he refused to take down a Ten Commandments statue and disagreed with the United States Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

“It’s not so much Democrat or Republican,” Ms. Jones said. “It’s just all of the drama. Enough of the negativity.”

Others were less plugged in.

At a nearby Subway sandwich shop, Civeta Boyd, a 24-year-old hairstylist, said she might have heard Mr. Moore’s name on the news. But she was not sure. There has, of late, been a blizzard of stories about American men acting badly.

“Roy Moore?” Ms. Boyd said, between bites of a salad. “He was a news anchor, something like that?”

That lack of recognition could change. Mr. Jones has an enormous fund-raising advantage and has blanketed the airwaves with TV ads, including during last week’s widely watched Iron Bowl football game between Auburn and Alabama.

National Democratic groups have been considering a late investment in advertising specifically aimed at increasing black turnout. But they are wary of spending any money that would stir up the Republican base. That could lead to targeted spending in areas like black radio and mailers to African-American neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Representative John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights icon and Alabama native, has campaigned for Mr. Jones. And Representative Terri Sewell, Mr. Lewis’s fellow Democrat and the first black congresswoman from Alabama, recently toured six Selma churches with Mr. Jones and plans on attending other campaign events on his behalf.

But no matter Mr. Moore’s troubles, the Democrats face a serious challenge. The national party has struggled to reignite black enthusiasm in the post-Obama era, and state Democrats are plagued by infighting. Republicans hold all of Alabama’s statewide offices, and some say the power of Alabama’s traditional black political organizations, which once turned out minority voters en masse, is substantially diminished. And the election will be held at a time of peak holiday distraction for voters of all races.

Moreover, Mr. Jones, who is white, is still not well known among many black voters, despite a sterling civil rights credential: In 2001 and 2002, while working as a United States attorney, he successfully prosecuted two white Klansmen for their roles in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four African-American girls.

Ms. Pettaway conceded that it was still necessary to teach many voters about Mr. Jones’s role in the bombing case. “I’m finding that a lot of people are not educated about that,” she said, adding, “The closer we get to the Election Day the more we will talk about that.”

Although whites make up about 71 percent of the Alabama electorate, black voters can exert substantial influence, depending on their turnout. The secretary of state’s office says that there are about 765,000 active black voters on the rolls and that only about one million voters are expected to go to the polls for the Senate race.

A Fox News poll conducted this month, after the first allegations against Mr. Moore became public, showed Mr. Jones drawing the support of 79 percent of nonwhite registered voters. Mr. Moore, the poll found, had the backing of fewer than one in 10 such voters.

Mr. Jones’s campaign manager, Wade Perry, said the candidate would not tailor his message to black voters, but focus instead on the more universal messages of job creation and health care. One new TV ad addresses the allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Moore. It features Ivanka Trump’s statement that there is “a special place in hell for people who prey on children”; Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s comment that he has “no reason to doubt” Mr. Moore’s accusers; and the decision by Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama not to vote for Mr. Moore.

“Doug has said from Day 1 that there is not a different message in different communities,” Mr. Perry said. “And what we’re seeing is folks are responding to our message.”

A message more customized to black voters is being spread by a group called Vote or Die, led by Faya Ora Rose Toure, a longtime Selma activist. The statewide get-out-the-vote effort has been handing out cards declaring that failing to vote on Dec. 12 would, among other things, obliterate housing and food programs, voting rights, “Justice & Civil Rights,” and “Efforts to Stop Police Brutality on unarmed Black & Brown men.”

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Mr. Jones met with voters at a restaurant in Talladega, Ala., last week.CreditDrew Angerer/Getty Images

Over the years, Mr. Moore has gained a following among some black Alabama residents with his focus on conservative values and the primacy of biblical law. James McCaney, the senior pastor at Victory Christian Fellowship Church in Florence, said that allegations not proven in a court of law were not enough to move him from his support for Mr. Moore.

“We have proof that he’s a Christian,” Mr. McCaney said. “Nobody has said he’s lived anything other than that for 35 to 40 years at least. With that kind of track record, we just don’t flip that away because of some allegations.”

Mr. Moore has denied any wrongdoing. His campaign did not respond to requests to discuss its strategy for reaching out to black voters.

Mr. Perry said the Jones campaign is hoping to make contact with “every single likely African-American voter” five or six times before the election, by mail, phone or otherwise. But he also said he has “gotten absolutely no help from the state Democratic Party,” saying that it had failed to finance the campaign and refused to share its executive committee’s contact information.

Nancy Worley, the state party chairwoman, said that the party had assigned money for national Democratic groups to use in the campaign and that she and Mr. Perry had a “long history” of bad blood.

The focus on the sexual allegations against Mr. Moore has been frustrating to Catherine Flowers, an activist who said they were blotting out other issues important to African-Americans.

“I am concerned about the allegations,” said Ms. Flowers, founder of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise, an antipoverty group. “But I’m also concerned that neither candidate is talking about issues that everyday Alabamians are concerned about now. That people have got sewer water backing up into their homes. That we’ve had hookworm discovered along the Selma to Montgomery trail. Why do we have homeless veterans? There’s so many issues out there that aren’t being addressed.”

Alan Blinder contributed reporting from Birmingham, Ala., and Alexander Burns from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Black Voters May Be Pivotal in Alabama Senate Race Rocked by Scandal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe